


Say it.

by tinylittlebrain



Series: Post-TLJ Reylo Therapy [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Force Bonds, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Longing, Reylo - Freeform, SPOILERS for TLJ, need to get it out of my system, yes I'm inspired too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:57:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13018941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinylittlebrain/pseuds/tinylittlebrain
Summary: I can't really summarize this due to spoilers. If you've watched TLJ and need a fix, then this may be for you.---tumblr: tinylittlebrain.tumblr.com





	Say it.

Something is up with Rey.

Leia knows because that’s her job, or should have been. Too late she’s been able to observe the nuances but that’s the fate of her family.

Not this time. Something troubles the girl, deeply.

That in itself isn’t surprising – Rey has seen enough action to last several lifetimes, but this 'something' goes beyond that, she is... _distracted_. At first, Leia assumes that it's due to Finn, or more aptly, _Finn and Rose_ , but now she’s less sure. This is the third conference the young Jedi has begged out of, breath quickened and knuckles whitened, and for once Leia doesn’t give her benefit of doubt.

She accesses the video feed instead.  

Rey is _talking_.

The feed isn’t audio enabled, but Leia doesn’t need it. Rey is not insane. She _sees_ someone, and as she watches the body language and wounded eyes Leia is confident it’s no Force ghost.

_Ben._

Or Kylo Ren, as it turns out. Or indeed a mixture, as Rey switches between the two names once she is called into Leia’s chambers and shown the tape.

What the General hears is both alarming and encouraging, but the young Jedi is cagey and sparse with details, enough so that it’s easy enough to connect that whatever vision of the future Rey shared with her son, it certainly entailed more than a lifelong _friendship_.

Still, she listens patiently before speaking.

“Rey, if you can touch through this bond, how do you know he can’t kill you through it?”

Rey shook her head. “He won’t.” She paused. “At least, he won’t like that.”

A vision passes through her then, her son and Rey tenderly embracing, as both are impaled on the other’s lightsaber. It wounds her, but she speaks.

“Could you kill _him_?”

She has to ask. Stars help her, it’s her job to ask.

Rey looks stricken.

“I can’t put the fate of thousands over one person, Rey.” She explains.

_I want to though. Sometimes._

“I can’t do that, put him down like...” She shuts her mouth. “No. I couldn’t. Not... Like that.”

Leia just sighs. She has no insight to give, no advice.

“I understand.” She comforts.

But she doesn’t, and she doubts they do either.

 

~

 

Rey is mulling over the General’s words when he appears. Again.

“Do you want to try?”

_Try and kill me._

Kylo asks it like asking if she’d like cup of caff.

She pauses.

“Say it.” He breathes, “ _say it_.”

“I don't want to kill you.” She snaps.

_I’m not going to make this easier for you._

“I thought I was a monster.” He drawls, a slight snideness to his voice.

“You can leave anytime you know.” Rey retorts, feeling heated.

He smirks. “ _Now_ who’s the conflicted one?”

“I’m _never_ joining the First Order.”

That, at least, is true. In the days they have spoken and she’s felt... odd. Not wanting to see him and wanting to, his words reverberating through her head.

_Nobody._

“Not. To. Me.” He grits out, almost as if it hurts him.

A pause.

“I stated that inelegantly… I was… _overwhelmed_ at what we had done.” Kylo explains.

Again, that calm, emotionless tone. For second Rey marvels at this man’s extremes. At one moment cold and impassive, at others more intense than a thousand stars.

“You were manipulating me.” She states. “You said my parentage was a weakness, you _used_ that to try and make me stay.”

Kylo scowls. “ _No_. That was the truth. _You_ manipulated yourself for years, _you_ repressed your truth. I _freed_ you, _I_ wrenched your wasted heart from the desert and left you free to...” he falters.

“Say it.” It’s her turn now. “ _Say it._ ”

_Left you free to love me._

It’s not spoken, but she feels it through the Force truer than words, and her fingers are brushing his.

“Come back.” He almost pleads. “We can make something better than it all. No light, no dark.”

Its too tempting that she turns away. She must. She feels for Ben Solo, she understands Kylo Ren, but she still cannot condone slaughter. Stupidly, she thinks it feels _unfair_.

Her throat burns.

“You took me to Snoke, Kylo. Weren’t you trading me too? You let him torture me for your own sake!” She’s almost choking on the words, the hurt. She needs it to cling to, or she will fall.

“ _No_.”

His face is tragically expressive.

“Never. I...” he falters again.

Tears stream down Rey’s cheeks.

“Leave me alone, Kylo Ren.”

And just like that, he is gone.

 

~

 

It’s been months since he’s seen her, connection or no, and Kylo sighs.

She was right and wrong. He had brought her before Snoke, but he’d never, _never_ intended a trade. It had been weakness, _fear_ , but he would have never have struck her down. Still, he’d had no plan, not truly, and even if he’d had one the risk would have been enormous.

So Rey was right, he supposes, he almost had traded her, and it haunts his dreams how close he had come to losing the only thing that has given him some measure of peace.

_Rey._

He feels her, sometimes, her thoughts dwelling on him, a tiny, tiny rush of pleasure and it drives him mad, overfills him with loathing and desire with the great irony of it all. That he _aches_ for his enemy, that his equal is has to be _her._

Kylo is far less subtle than her, throwing the connection open as he pumps his hand, chanting her name, flooding the Force with everything he has ever dreamed, hoped and craved for them. She _must_ feel it. There is no way she does not feel it.

But nothing. _Nothing._

Only the smallest concession when he hears about _him_.

Dameron.

The holonet links the pilot with her and he reacts badly, posting the galaxy’s largest ever bounty for the man’s head. Then, and _only_ then does she grace him with the smallest of whispers, a reassurance of sorts, and admonishment.

_I would never put someone I love at risk like that._

So she is not involved with him, but she loves him enough that she dares cross the boundary she made, and that too incenses him. Still, he drops the price. It’s impulsive, and Hux rants that his hand is well past tipped, but he finds he doesn’t care.

He just _doesn’t care_. Building this alone is worthless, and he senses he has lost the respect of even his Knights. They know his weakness, and they resent him for it. They know, as he does, that when the time comes he _will_ let her kill him and–

“–Rey.”

Its been months, and yet he turns around in an instant and she’s here.

Dying.

_The Knights._

He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. They can’t kill him, but they can kill _her_.

“Rey!”

“Ben...”

Without knowing, without _thinking_ Kylo bends the Force, temporarily rends the fabric of the universe, and he’s _there. There_ and killing them, there and healing her, there and feeling her heart beat under his hands, there and passing out, near-dead in front of his greatest enemy.

 

_~_

 

The First Order falls swiftly, because Hux has always been a shitty general.

 _That_ makes sense.

What does _not_ make sense is Rey.

Rey, who now that she is not as crucial in the field, is still sat by that _thing’s_ bed and at times even sleeping there. Rey, who murmurs the name _Ben_ in her sleep even though the eyes under those pallid lids remain yellow and vicious.

“There’s good in him.” She tells him, her tone not brooking argument.

Poe bites his tongue.

 _Loving Rey does not make you good,_ the pilot thinks bitterly as he watches Ren’s chest rise and fall, _it just proves there’s still a man inside there._

He’s not mad at _her_ though. Ren was in her brain long before anyone else had a chance. He’s mad _for_ her. Because even if he wakes up, they’ll kill him. There’s no way they will not kill him.

As it stands though it’s been a year, and he’s worried Rey will waste her life away fretting over a sleeping corpse, counting the days like in fucking _Jakku._

_I hate the Force._

He can’t even pretend to understand, and he hates even more that he owes him something, because they _were_ going to die. Without him, they would have died.

“I know he’ll wake up. I _saw it.”_ Rey whispers it. “I love him.”

Poe sighs.

_And I love you._

And he knows then that when the day comes he’ll smuggle the man that tortured him out of the heart of the most fortified Resistance structure ever conceived, because while he deserves nothing...

Rey deserves everything.

 

~

 

Kylo’s unsure when he finally wakes.

He’s on the Falcon, and _she’s_ here and immediately he panics.

_It’s gone, all of it._

He tries to summon his lightsaber, but there are none on board, which panics him more until finally _she_ arrives, sprinting before stopping dead at the door, also unsure.

“ _Ben._ ” She breathes.

He has questions, _needs_ to take control, but everything is obliterated in that instant, because she rushes forward and her lips are _on_ him. Her fingers are a balm, and he is so unused to feeling anything that he’s shuddering, pathetic under her hands, shivering at her words.

_I love you I need you please let it go forget it all please stay please please please_

She’s ruining it, breaking down his resolve, ruining _everything_ and it feels...

_Incredible._

His whole life he’s been someone, wanting _something_ , but here?

Above him Rey is sweat sheened and lovely, breathless pants echoing in his ears as he feels painfully hard, whimpering at her touch.

He’s never wanted, never _needed_ anything quite this badly, and he’s so disoriented and needy that he barely registers her shedding of clothes, only her gasps as she seats himself atop him and Kylo grits his teeth, as it’s almost painful how _good_ it feels.

“Rey…”

He tries to warn than he’s not going to last but his brain has simply shut down, feeling her around him, _having_ her, it…

“It feels _so good_.” Rey blurts, finishing his thoughts. “I’m…”

Now she’s flooding _him_ with her sensations, and it’s too much. It’s release and he thinks he might die, and even afterwards he’s sluggish and comatose with tears tracking down his face.

_I love you._

Rey, for her part, stays. He can feel both concern and a tiny bit of smugness, the headiness of the power she has over him, the reversal of roles.

“What now?” He croaks out, after a time.

He has gleaned it all from her mind, and he’s weirdly disconnected from it. Everything he has ever worked for is gone and he simply does not care.

“You already know.” Says the strange girl from Jakku. “Say it.”

“Nothing.”

A weight lifts. He is not Ben Solo, he is not Kylo Ren, he is neither Jedi Master nor Supreme Leader.

 _I am nothing._ He realises.

_And I am free._


End file.
